DEVIOUS cyber-criminals are costing British businesses almost £2.5 billion pounds a year.

E-crime is the committing of traditional crimes through electronic means and, according to new statistics from the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, the impact of this is costing firms £2.45 billion annually.

Of the 200 companies surveyed, 89 per cent said that they had experienced some form of hi-tech crime.

About 90 per cent had suffered from unauthorised access to, or penetration of, their company systems, while 89 per cent had suffered the theft of information.

And 97 per cent of respondents said they had experienced virus attacks, which had cost them more than £70 million in total.

Nine per cent of them said financial fraud had cost them more than £68 million.

However, the survey highlighted that not all the attacks were from an external source. Crimes committed by employees were also listed, with sabotage of data and networks topping the bill.

Detective Inspector Paul Ginger, of Wiltshire Police's Fraud Squad and Hi-Tech Crime Unit, based in Devizes, said electronic criminals were able to get away with cyber crimes because of the speed of electronic banking systems.

He said: "Nowadays you have pressed the button and the money has moved into the account.

"A few years ago, it might have taken up to a week for that transfer process to take place."

Recently Det Insp Ginger has been investigating a series of frauds.

Fraudsters in several African companies have been researching Wiltshire firms then approaching Japanese vehicle manufacturers and ordering vehicles such as vans, and even cranes, to the value of £28,000.

They then ask for them to be delivered to African countries, but for the invoices to be sent to the Wiltshire companies.

It leaves the Wiltshire firms puzzled over why they have received such a vast invoice and the Japanese firm out of pocket.

Det Insp Ginger said: "It's a clever fraud, and we have had a raft of them in the county.

"With such high values of money involved its easy to see why e-crime is costing businesses billions of pounds a year."

In 2003, Allied Dunbar worker, Christine Ireland was given a two -year suspended sentence for trying to manipulate a bond she held to the tune of £1.5 million.

In 2001, Beryl Rowlands from Blunsdon was jailed for four and a half years after pleading guilty to stealing £1.7m over a decade from Dunbar Bank, a subsidiary bank of Allied Dunbar by adjusting data in computer systems.

Det Insp Ginger said: "Many large firms have the infrastructure to deal with e-crime, but smaller companies, who have the most to lose, don't have that because they cannot afford it.

"I urge all businesses to ensure their virus checkers and firewalls are up-to-date, and passwords are not obvious to hackers."

Anthony Osborne